Happy October!

My favorite literary character and my favorite season!

Ahhh... October is finally here! The Fall season awakens my soul and brings me such joy. I have a hard time with the heat of Summer, so Fall is such a lovely change. There are so many wonderful things about October: the crisp cool air, the beautiful leaves, college football season, General Conference, the harvest, apple-picking, and pumpkin flavored everything. I LOVE it all! This week it has finally cooled off after a very warm September. We had a couple of days of rainy weather, which made the world around me so vibrant and enchanting. I had to run out and take some photos of our pretty yard. I love that our trees are so colorful. That was one thing I always wanted in our future yard, and now we have it. Life is good, and we are blessed!

We are also lucky to have a great view of "Y" mountain. The storm did pretty amazing things to the sky, and I just loved the look of the light streaming through the dark clouds. That is what October feels like to me... beautiful rays of light that brighten the world and reinvigorate my soul. 

One of our favorite things in New York was going apple picking outside of the City. I had never done it before, but we had such a great time. Now every Fall, I get the itch to pick (and eat) fresh apples. Lucky for us, we had two apple trees at our new house. We don't have to go very far to pick apples! Unfortunately, the previous owners planted the trees way too close to the foundation of the house, so they had nowhere to grow, and we risked causing damage to the house. They were bent over pretty badly, so we decided that we would pick the apples this year, and then cut them down and replace them. Hyrum and I picked all of the apples at the beginning of October. We had both Fuji and Golden Delicious. Hyrum was a good helper, and we ended up getting a whole big cooler full of beautiful apples.

We had so many of them, that I decided to can apple sauce. Hyrum is allergic to eggs, so we use lots of apple sauce as a substitute in baked goods. I really had no idea where to even begin, but my Aunt Sharon just happens to be a domestic diva, and came down to help me learn to can. She brought down all of her kitchen equipment, and we went to work. We cut, cooked, and processed 24 jars of delicious apple sauce. It was seriously so good that my boys ate 3 jars in the first week. I love that it is REAL food, with very little sugar, and was practically free. I'm so grateful for Aunt Sharon's kindness and her awesome skills!

If you couldn't tell, October makes me happy. Like Anne, I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.